In the House of My Friends
ZECHARIAH 13:6
6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
Christ at His second return to the Jews is now revealing himself to his own household of who had previously rejected and crucified him - just as Joseph revealed himself to his brothers after they had thrown him in the pit.
*And we notice here that even though his own brethren had wounded and crucified Him, yet He had never became bitter towards them, but he endured all the wrong that was done to him, and the secret of this was because of his great love that he had for them, and so this is what the love of God actually looks like.
*So where there is bitterness and a lack of forgiveness among brethren, it is because of a lack of the love of God, because love beareth all things, and love endureth all things, and love is kind when it has not been kind to – we are speaking of agape love, which is the love of God – human (phileo) love can’t reach that far.
JOHN 13:35
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have (agape) love one to another.
**It’s easy to love people that are kind towards you (almost anyone can do that), but the real test of the love of God in the heart of a person is when you can love those who are from within your own house who have been mean to you in a way like what we saw of what Jesus suffered among the house of his friends – that takes the grace and love of God.
In the House of My Friends
We want to try to study a little into this subject of the wounds that we can sometimes receive from within our own ranks of the household of the people that we regard as our friends and fellow believers – and this is a deeper thought of the truth of the word that we want to look at in order to help us realise that God’s ways for our life will often allow these sort of troubles to come amongst us at times to test us of what we really have inside of us.
*We know that God has a divine purpose for every trial and every struggle that we go through in life, and it is all for the purpose of the development of our character in order to bring us into a maturity until God can see his own great character of love and forgiveness reflected back in our character.
**God has assured us that He will make everything work out just right for us at the end of the journey, and that is because He is working everything in our lives toward an end point that is for our good.
The scripture tells us that “He maketh all things well” (Mark 7:37) and that he has planned a good outcome for our lives of peace and good things (Jeremiah 29:11).
*And so because of this we can have a confidence in God that everything that has happened to us in our lives in the past, and everything that will happen to us in the future will be in the full control of His great design and plan and purpose for our lives.
Opening scripture:
ZECHARIAH 13:6
6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
**This great Father God that ruled and reigned supreme throughout the Old Testament had now become flesh in the New Testament in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. The God of the Old Testament became the Jesus of the New Testament.
*And so when this great God became flesh and became a humble man that walk among the people of His own household of brotherhood, He began to be treated in the same way that He had been treated before during the time of the Old Testament, and so He was again rejection by the very people that was of his own household.
*And it is for certain that His heart (during the Old Testament times) would have been often wounded by the rejection of the people. He once told the prophet Samuel, that they have not rejected you Samuel, but they have rejected me – and God felt that rejection as a wound in His heart.
***But now that this God of the Old Testament had put on human flesh and had become a man in the New Testament, the people were now able to not only wound him in his heart by their rejection, but now they were also able to wound Him in his hands and feet by nailing Him to the cross.
*There are wounds that you can see as scars in a persons flesh, but then there are also wounds of the heart that leave us with scars that you cannot see, but Christ is the one who is not only the healer of the body, but is also the healer of the heart.
PROVERBS 27:6
6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
*Many times we can misunderstand situations and take offence even when the intension of the person was to not to bring offence.
A friend is someone who at times will try to give you constructive criticism for your good, and even though this may wound your spirit a little, it is intended for your good and for your advancement, where as an enemy will only flatter you for the purpose of their own ends – so this is where there is sometimes misunderstanding that become involved among people, and it is this misunderstanding that can go on to cause so much of the troubles that people can sometimes experience.
**Brother Branham speaks of battle scarred veterans and of wounded soldiers that have endured through this life of battles and scars, and he tells us of how we will all be seated around that great table one day when the bible is closed, and the arms have been stacked, and the battle smoke of the sorrows of life have all drifted away, and all the wrongs have been made right, and we are all at fathers house – it will be worth it all then.
*But while we are in this life, we must realise that many of the wounds that we receive along the road of life, God will allow them to come from within the house of our friends – and there is a good reason why God allows it to be this way, and that is a mystery of what he is showing us here in the word.
“What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends”.
*Why would anyone ever receive wounds from within the house of their own friends? - It is almost a paradox to even think of such a thing, you would think that it would be your enemies that would seek to hurt you (and yes they can certainly do that), but why from within the circle of your own friends, or if we take it from the other angle, why would you wound one who you would consider to be your friend?
*But according to this scripture, and as strange as it may seem, friends of your own household can wound you – and we have seen the reality of that many many times within the household of the faith of within the brotherhood of the message world.
*Even in a home of a family (at a family level) - A husband can wound his wife just by the way he acts towards her or by saying unkind words.
The wife can also wound the husband in the same way, or the children the parents, or the parents the children, or the grandparents the grandchildren, or the grandchildren the grandparents, or the mother in law or the father in law – on and on. These are common things that can happen among families – but why?
*The answer is, that it is because of the sin that resulted in the fall of man in Eden, because that sin produced a fallen and sticky human nature that resides in the human spirit of every human being that was born of a woman since that time.
*When we were birth as little babies into the world, we received this human nature that was already fallen from the perfection of what God had created it to be in the beginning. Sin had perverted man’s spirit from the nature of God to the nature of a fallen man, and so it is this fallen human spirit that is the cause of so many of the troubles that are in the world today of the wars and the hatred between people.
Beyond the curtain of time – brother Branham tells us that there was no jealousy there, there was no envy there, there was no bad thoughts there, not one bad thought could ever enter into that place – it was perfection upon perfection, because the fallen nature of man was nowhere in that realm and could never enter that place – the sticky part of your fallen nature that still sticks to you in this life will become completely unstuck from you when you enter into that place.
JOB 14:1
1 ¶ Man that is born of a woman (With a fallen human nature) is of few days, and full of trouble.
***That is why we need to be reborn in our nature by the revelation of the word for our age – but even the new birth doesn’t fully rid us of the effects of our old fallen human nature because some of it still sticks to us because it is still in the genetics of our fallen bodies and our fallen human spirits.
QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS.4_ JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_ 64-0830E
1149-30 How can I take a cocklebur and make a grain of wheat out of it? It's impossible for me to do it. The only way it can be is because inside that cocklebur has been transmitted from a cocklebur wheat--a cocklebur to a germ called "wheat life." Then you bury that cocklebur, and it'll produce a grain of wheat (That's right. See?), because there has been a life of wheat put in the cocklebur. And the life of the cocklebur has been taken out; but the nature of the cocklebur is still sticky (See?), and it will be until this new life has fully been developed out of the ground and raised up again. When it comes forth, then it's no more cocklebur, but wheat--but wheat. But while it's here on earth and the--in the--out of the earth... And a cocklebur, it's still sticky, but it's got the nature on the inside of it of wheat.
And as long as you're in this life, you're going to be sticky and have a carnal nature that's going to bother you as long as you live; but the inside of you, you're borned again. And when you're raised up, you're in the likeness of Christ and all the sin is gone from you. See? That's--that's the thing.
*There are wounds of scars in the flesh (like the wounds in Jesus hands) that you could see, but then there are also wounds within the heart of a person that you cannot see.
PSALM 147:3
3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
**Jesus himself endured many wounds of the heart during his lifetime on earth because of the rejection of the people that he loved – and these were the people of his own household that He truly love them and had come to heal and to bless them and to save them, and even many of them of whom were his own followers and of whom he called his friends, as time went on, many of them left him along the way because of His stand with the revelation of the word for that hour, and then those that did remain with Jesus often had their friends leave them also.
GO.TELL.MY.DISCIPLES_ JEFF.IN V-25 N-5 SUNDAY_ 53-0405S
65 These little disciples, after they... little band that was hated in the beginning... They had not many friends of this earth.
And any man that serves Jesus Christ will not have many friends of this earth. You have to stand on your convictions alone. Many times you have to stand by yourself, but He promised He would stand with you.
It goes against common human nature to not want lots of friends in life.
It is normal for humans to want to be accepted by others and to be friends with people and to not have enemies, but as believes of the message of the hour, this is something that we have to face in that we know that not all people are a good influence, and we are better off to be without them than to be with the wrong company.
*You see these social media platforms of how people crave the thought of having thousands of friends, and they literally become addicted to this idea in their minds, but the reality is that many of these supposed “friends” are in reality not actually your friends at all – it is mostly just a big lie and an imagination of the mind.
WATCHMAN.WHAT.OF.THE.NIGHT_ LAKEPORT.CA FRIDAY_ 60-0722
E-47 Don't build your hopes on things of this world. Keep your minds off of this... Just say, "Well, I'll believe I'll turn over a new page, and go join church." Don't you do that; you get borned again. Don't care what takes place, how many friends you lose, what your neighbor says about it. Why, they're going to say it anyhow. Any man that... "All that lives godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." So don't pay any attention to that.
Just go on and say, "God, give me the Holy Ghost upon Your grounds, the way You want me to have It. Pour It out upon me; give me faith. I want faith. I want to believe in Divine healing; I want to believe in the power of God." And He will do it.
IS.YOUR.LIFE.WORTHY.OF.THE.GOSPEL_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-5 SUNDAY_ 63-0630E
246 The rich man had his excuse. He couldn't do it. He was too weighted down with too many friends of the world. He didn't want to quit associating.
So we have to be very careful with the types of friends that we have who are not believers, because the company that we keep will have an influence on us for the good or for the bad, and so we need to discern that influence.
FROM.THAT.TIME_ SPOKANE.WA FRIDAY_ 62-0713
E-71 …Notice. That's a bad thing for me. Now... I lose too many friends. But I know I'm staying in friendship with Christ, because it's written right here. That's exactly right.
**So the friends that we do have within the household of faith, we want to cherish those friends, and these are the friends that God will use (because of their sticky natures) to rub us up the wrong way at times.
*And so we must realise that it is from among this group of within our own household that God will use people in what might seem to be a very negative way in our lives, but he does that in order to bring us to a maturity and to allow us the opportunity to reflect God’s character under these conditions.
GENESIS 37:18-20
18 And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.
19 And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.
20 Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
**Look at this household of faith in the bible – they were of the lineage of the true God that had revealed Himself to Abraham, and these brothers were of this household of this great family of the revelation that had been passed down to them from the very God of Abraham himself.
***Their very own father is Jacob who became Israel who is the son of Isaac and Abraham; you would think that this household would be all smooth with the love of God flowing out from every member – that is what I would think, and that is also what people think of how this message household of faith should be like in this age – and maybe it should be, but the reality is that that is not how it has mostly been.
**So we see how that Jacob’s sons were acting so mean toward one of their very own household and blood.
*First they wanted to murder Joseph just because he had had a certain dream that they didn’t like (this was their little baby brother that there should have been a natural human feeling to protect him), and then they threw him into a pit for dead, and then they sold him as a slave and pocketed the money for themselves, and then the lied to the beloved father about the whole thing – what sort of love would you say would be in a family like that?
You would say that there was no love involved in that household at all, but yet this is placed here in the bible because there was a great mystery and purpose that God had in his mind in all of this – because all of these negative things were in God’s plan for that household and that family in order for them to be saved and to reveal the grace of God to them - not only would they have all perished in the coming seven years of famine, but their fallen nature and cruelty that was in their hearts would not have been dealt with by the pain of the trial that they had to endure because of what they had done.
***So God knows just what we need – he satisfies, and every need supplies, yes he knows just what I need.
ZECHARIAH 13:6
6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
*What we must understand, is that the things that Christ suffered during his earthly journey in human flesh and among the fallen nature of humanity, God will also lead us to go through similar experiences during our lives also.
*And just like what we saw happen with Joseph and His brothers, and what happened with king David when Saul was trying to kill him (and he had the opportunity to retaliate), and then what they did to Jesus when he came to earth of how these friends of his own house wounded him and yet he endured that and loved them in spite of what they did.
**This is the Love of the character of God that is to be expressed amongst the true believers of this hour, this is what perfect love looks like – a love that can forgive the people who have wounded you from within the house of your very own friends.